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Posted Feb 7, 2008, 5:26 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 41,022
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Quote:
Originally Posted by towerguy3
Now you're telling us that that's not the case. Show us evidence, show us some sort of City Directive, some decision from City Council, that explicitely informed the Vancouver Whitecaps to look elsewhere for a new site, show a link to that directive, and explain why the Whitecaps are pointing their fingers at City Council when they seem to feel they've done no wrong.
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Again, provide a link to the Directive from City Council telling the Whitecaps that the original proposal was a nonstarter. I never heard this from the media. Provide some evidence please.
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The decision to move the site from over the tracks would not have been made in response to an official "decision" by Vancouver City Council ordering them to move it - so there would be no publicly available record of it. As with any development in the City of Vancouver, the project is discussed informally with City staff and the project is massaged into a form that is likely to be acceptable to the City - even before the project is taken to the UDP and DBP (i.e. the project proponent puts out feelers to test the waters). In the case of the stadium, the City and proponents misjudged the level of opposition from Gastown and the project was reanalysed and reworked to address concerns expressed by the City as a result of public opposition (read stories below) (i.e. the solution was to move it).
Remember that the reason that the stadium project made its way to the waterfront is because City staff informally told the Whitecaps that it preferred a waterfront location more than the False Creek Flats location that the Whitecaps were considering - and that's not in any City Council minutes either.
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Quote:
Business in Vancouver June 20-26, 2006; issue 869
Grandstanding: The great stadium debate
Vancouver’s Gastown business community is at a crossroads as competing visions for the city’s central waterfront go to council June 27
Bob Mackin
Corner kicks or condos?
That’s the basis for the great stadium debate of 2006.
Will media-shy, tech-millionaire Greg Kerfoot get a chance to build his privately financed 15,000-seat stadium for soccer and more by Burrard Inlet’s shore?
Or will Reliance Holdings’ real estate developer Jon Stovell’s dream of Concord Pacific-style condo towers next to Gastown’s red-brick historic buildings entice council? The answer could come as soon as June 27 when city council examines the high level review of the Whitecaps Waterfront Stadium proposal. Like many a soccer match, it’ll require plenty of time added on. The speakers’ list could be as long as a soccer pitch.
Kerfoot bought the Canadian Pacific railyard last summer for $20 million, and the Whitecaps announced plans for the 15,000-seat stadium – expandable to 30,000 – last October. It would be built to open in 2009 on a platform above the railway tracks using the latest in sustainable B.C. building products. Soccer is the most-played game in Canada, and the Lower Mainland is the nation’s soccer hotbed. But the park won’t be for soccer alone. Rugby, tennis and concerts would find a home there. Vanoc wants to use it as a sponsor or national Olympic committee venue during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Not so fast, said Stovell. He has likened the stadium proposal to the aborted Project 200 of the 1960s, which envisioned three-dozen low-rises and towers above the tracks. He’s spearheading a campaign by the ad hoc Gastown Neighourhood Coalition and Gastown Residents Association to thwart the stadium. It’s all stage-managed by Reputations Corporation, the spin doctors who helped elect NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan last fall.
“It’s just a bad, disrespectful type of development,” Stovell said. “It’s rail land as long as it needs to be rail land, but if it’s going to be something else, it should be developed properly, and this part of the city should have the same opportunity to reconnect to the waterfront as others.”
The Gastown Business Improvement Society paid an architect to devise three alternatives that don’t look dissimilar to Project 200.
It shows a future without railway tracks. In their place, low-rises. On the waterfront, condo towers.
A stadium could fit, Stovell said, on ground level only.
GBIS did not consult the Vancouver Port Authority, CP Rail or the Whitecaps and conceded that the railway tracks may remain for decades.
Public open houses, opinion polls and architecture studies yielded city hall planner Kevin McNaney’s report on the high level review.
It will be council’s guide as it comes to a decision.
McNaney raised red flags about inadequate vehicle access, movement of dangerous goods in the railyard, the design’s relationship with historic Gastown and its impact on area livability.
All the issues, he wrote, can be resolved with “very large financial investments, additional site area and co-operation or partnerships with key landowners.”
Whitecaps president John Rocha said the club is eager to fix the problems and proceed with a formal application to build the stadium.
It would, he said, be a rare privately financed public asset and, as such, deserves to proceed on a schedule instead of being studied ad nauseam and hampered by delays.
Gastown resident John Kostiuk said if Stovell prevails, it would send a bad message to anyone wanting to invest in Gastown.
“Every year the Whitecaps are not allowed to develop the stadium is a loss of a Major League Soccer franchise, lost revenue, lost opportunity to the city of tax revenue the city is not generating. The neighborhood needs it.”
Kostiuk lives in a loft at Water Street’s Taylor Building where he’s also strata council president.
He runs a home-based Cuban cigar mail order company and dabbles in Web design.
Kostiuk said he couldn’t continue to sit on the sidelines, so he started the independent Stadium Now pro stadium group and its stadiumnow.org website.
He said the opposition groups didn’t exist before the stadium was proposed and don’t truly represent Gastown residents or their interests.
“We have huge issues with dumpster fires in the alley, panhandling, drug use. They did a porno shoot in our alley this last week. There are real issues facing the neighborhood,” Kostiuk said. “What is your position on them?”
Anti-stadium groups won’t say precisely how many members or supporters they have.
GBIS president Paul Ardagh would only say “a majority” are opposed.
Kostiuk has 26 supporters and said he would have more if people weren’t afraid to alienate Stovell, whose company is a major Gastown landowner.
“Gassy Jack [Deighton, Gastown’s namesake] was a saloon owner. The first business down here on the waterfront was a lumber mill.
“The neighbourhood has residences in it, it’s got social housing, it’s got retail, it’s got office space, it’s got industrial uses,” Kostiuk said.
“That’s why people like myself live in Gastown. I don’t want to live in Yaletown. I don’t want to be surrounded by condo towers.”
[email protected]
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Quote:
Business in Vancouver July 18-24, 2006; issue 873
Whitecaps mull 2-year stadium game plan
Numerous strings attached to city council approval of downtown venue that could host 2010 and FIFA events
Bob Mackin
The Vancouver Whitecaps are a step closer to playing soccer by the sea.
But Vancouver city council’s July 11 unanimous decision to allow the soccer club to proceed with its plan to build a stadium above railway tracks behind Waterfront Station comes with many strings attached.
The vote begins a 24-month process with quarterly reports by the planning department to council. The Whitecaps may have to buy or lease additional land from the Port of Vancouver for a road network around the stadium and to make it fit with historic neighbouring Gastown. City planning director Larry Beasley said the costs of resolving the flaws in the proposal could rival the cost of the stadium itself.
Yet club spokesman Bob Lenarduzzi, director of soccer operations, is confident all concerns can be resolved.
“We still want to try to make the project a priority. We have an identified timeline now of 24 months,” Lenarduzzi said. “All the issues that need to be resolved can be resolved within that 24 months. Once we’ve done that, we can ideally get the shovel in the ground.”
Lenarduzzi wouldn’t estimate the cost of the project, though Toronto’s $65 million soccer stadium, which is under construction, is funded mainly by taxpayers.
Whitecaps’ owner Greg Kerfoot, who met privately with councillors but did not speak publicly during the entire process, bought the Canadian Pacific railyard on the city’s central waterfront last year for $20 million.
Kerfoot, who sold his Crystal Decisions software company to Business Objects for $800 million in 1998, plans to finance the rest of the project. Whitecaps’ president John Rocha has told BIV that federal, provincial or civic funding would be welcomed, but not essential.
Whitecaps originally wanted a new stadium in time for next year’s 2007 FIFA Under-20 World Cup and had examined the False Creek Flats near Pacific Central Station.
A Kerfoot numbered company bought the waterfront land instead, apparently on advice from city hall. When the stadium was announced last fall, a 2009 completion date was mentioned. After a six-month high-level review, staff now estimates it could take until 2011 for the 15,000-seat stadium – expandable to 30,000 – to be built because of the planning and permits process. Whitecaps are hoping to prove it’s worthy of being fast-tracked so it can at least be built in time to act as a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics sponsors’ village.
Reliance Holdings general manager Jon Stovell led the ad hoc Gastown Neighbourhood Coalition to oppose the project. Despite his hiring NPA-allied public relations and lobbying firm Reputations Corporation, no councillors voted against the project. Councillors Heather Deal, Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson were promoting an amendment to force the Whitecaps and city hall to look for alternate sites.
When their proposal was defeated, they joined the majority and voted for Coun. Suzanne Anton’s motion supporting the Whitecaps.
“The Whitecaps have a lot of very technical and difficult issues to resolve,” Stovell said. “It’s really up to them to satisfy the community’s expectations.
“We would’ve liked council to ask them to participate in a much more cautious process, but in the end, the stadium might defeat itself because of the obstacles they face.”
If it does get built by 2011, the stadium could host matches in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Canada is bidding on the tournament, which will be staged in China next year.
Canada was a frontrunner to host 2007’s event, but plans for a bid evaporated when international soccer governing body FIFA moved the 2003 event to United States, which hosted the 1999 tournament, because of the SARS outbreak, and automatically awarded 2007 to China.
Meanwhile, the Whitecaps begin the countdown to the 2007 Under-20 World Cup this week with their first Nations Cup tournament at Swangard Stadium. China’s under-20 national team, India’s senior national team and Wales’ Cardiff City FC are playing in the international exhibition, which will be carried live on Shaw TV and beamed to China and India.
Swangard will be enlarged with temporary seating and facilities to host first-round matches next June for FIFA’s second biggest stand-alone tournament. A worldwide TV audience of 600 million is expected to tune into matches, which will include future stars of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Though it’s doubtful it will generate TV viewership numbers to rival the 2006 World Cup on CTV, TSN and Rogers Sportsnet, the international exposure will dwarf the 2006 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Hockey Championship that was hosted last winter in B.C.
[email protected]
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Quote:
Business in Vancouver August 8-14, 2006; issue 876
At Large: Peter Ladner
Proposed stadium looms over Gastown buildings
It’s hard to say whether Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot got the go-ahead or got whistled to the sidelines after Vancouver City Council’s recent decision on the downtown soccer stadium. Council unanimously said “go ahead, but…” any future rezoning application for Whitecaps lands over the tracks just east of the SeaBus terminal would be subject to:
a street network to open up more than the two proposed south-side exits from the stadium
dealing with risks from dangerous goods on the rail lands underneath the elevated platform
making the stadium “fit” better with Gastown
reducing the impact on residents in Gastown
making sure it didn’t clash with future Port Lands development plans.
Those are not easy conditions to meet. The street network alone – think of ramps from Cordova down to the waterfront east of Waterfront Station – could cost as much as the stadium itself.
Who knows what would be involved in reducing (eliminating?) the risks from dangerous goods that already threaten the entire area, but which might be made more dangerous by putting a roof over the railyard?
The scale of a stadium, even at the initial configuration of 15,000 seats, looms over heritage-renovated buildings in Gastown that have height restrictions well below the proposed stadium’s top tier. The only way to reduce the crowd impacts on Gastown’s narrow streets is to divert thousands of the spectators away from Water Street. That means opening up access onto the road along the waterfront on the north side of the tracks.
And that puts the stadium traffic right in the way of port uses on this last piece of undeveloped downtown waterfront. Traffic isn’t the only issue with the port. To give Gastown some breathing room, the stadium would have to be pushed north onto port lands, thereby becoming part of the port’s plans for redevelopment of that property. Those plans have been underway for a decade and, according to outgoing city planning director Larry Beasley, would take another decade to be fully and completely resolved. In the meantime, the Whitecaps have to get tangled up in the city’s ongoing Central Waterfront Hub and Rail Lands Study.
The toughest challenge will be reconciling the stadium with port plans. Port representatives have expressed a willingness to work with the stadium, but the port has a lot of other ideas for that land.
Their latest plan, never formally made public, was for two million or so square feet of commercial, retail, hotel and cruise-ship related development. Those non-port uses were being justified because they would pay for a new cruise ship terminal on the site, something the port now says won’t work there. As recently as two months ago, a delegation from the port brought up the issue of relaxation of land use with federal port officials in Ottawa. “We were told in no uncertain terms, by senior policy advisors, that they would not allow non-port uses on port lands,” said port spokesperson Duncan Wilson.
The only way around that might be for the Whitecaps to mobilize a public outcry for an exception to federal port policy, and to guarantee a significant payback to the port for the stadium encroachment.
Potential alternative sites are equally challenging. B.C. Place won’t be coming down at least until 2010, if then. Hastings Park, aside from being too far from transit and corporate offices, already went through a huge neighbourhood fight to get rid of Empire Stadium. Main and Terminal is still available, but it’s small for a stadium, and is also in the sights of residential and commercial developers.
There are very few people who don’t want a new soccer stadium in the city, and many people appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime offer of a privately-financed one.
Fitting it in will require even more determination and imagination and patience than the Whitecaps have expended getting it this far. That’s not an easy task, but it’s not impossible.
Peter Ladner (www.peterladner.ca) is a Vancouver city councillor and vice-president, Business in Vancouver Media Group, [email protected]. His column appears every two weeks.
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Quote:
Business in Vancouver June 19-25, 2007; issue 921
Team takes another run at soccer stadium plan
Opposition to Whitecaps proposal dwindling as new proposal addresses community and city concerns
Andrew Petrozzi
A retooled plan for Vancouver’s controversial waterfront stadium is alive and well and promising to include a host of additional area business opportunities.
Originally planning to go before Vancouver council this month, Vancouver Whitecaps FC COO Rachel Lewis confirmed to BIV that the soccer club will instead appear before council in the fall to show that it has addressed five key requirements for its rezoning application.
They include:
• resolving railyard dangerous goods risks and liabilities;
• reconfiguring the stadium to ensure a better fit with Gastown;
• resolving impacts on the livability of residential areas south of the rail lands;
• resolving impacts on future port development; and
• providing an adequate street network.
In February, the soccer club presented a revised stadium plan it felt addressed many of the city’s and community’s concerns.
Bob Lenarduzzi, president of football operations, said all the issues had yet to be resolved. He added that the club remained in discussions with the city, the port authority and the regional transit authority, TransLink.
The new plan locates the waterfront stadium slightly west of the previously proposed site, just north of the CP Rail tracks near the SeaBus hub.
Instead of being over the railroad tracks, it would be built in part on port lands administered by the Vancouver Port Authority (VPA) and would extend out over Burrard Inlet.
The stadium would be separate from Gastown, and its height would be reduced compared with its predecessor.
Lewis said the Whitecaps organization is finalizing the stadium’s location with the VPA and working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. She confirmed that the SeaBus terminal might also need to be moved.
The new site has eliminated most of the original opposition to the stadium proposal and, in the minds of the Whitecaps, dealt with four of the five city concerns, leaving only an adequate street network to be determined.
Lewis said that creating space between Gastown and the stadium brought former opposition groups onside.
She confirmed that the new proposal still includes 140,000 square feet of multi-use space that could be used for convention and meeting rooms, child-care facilities or for retail and restaurant. Lewis pointed out that there has never been a defined retail component in either the current proposal or the original.
Lenarduzzi has likened the proposed waterfront stadium to Toronto’s new BMO Field, which opened in April. He said the stadium generated strong public and corporate interest and support for the city’s new Toronto FC Major League Soccer team.
Lenarduzzi believes that experience would be repeated in Vancouver.
Lewis said both the Gastown Business Improvement Society (BIS) and the Vancouver Heritage Commission have been positive in meetings about the revised site. She added that the groups now recognize the benefits the Whitecaps saw from the outset.
Leanore Sali, executive director of the Gastown BIS, confirmed the society had supported the revised location when it came before council in February and still does. The Central Waterfront Coalition, which had opposed the stadium, did not respond to e-mails seeking comment for this story.
Lewis said that all groups involved, including the port, the city and TransLink, are working together to make the stadium work.
But VPA planning director Patrick McLaughlin said two significant issues remain for the port:
• Obtaining support and approval for the waterfront stadium proposal from Transport Canada – a process, according to McLaughlin, that will take until this fall.
The port supports the stadium proposal providing it can be developed and incorporated into the central waterfront transportation hub.
• Ensuring that the stadium plans consider the port’s transportation needs, including its impact on the nearby railyard, cruise terminal, SeaBus and HeliJet operations and a potential future regional ferry terminal.
Discussions are also continuing over who would own the land the stadium is built on.
McLaughlin said the port is considering exchanging the port land used in the construction of a new waterfront stadium in return for the balance of the rail land yards acquired earlier by Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot.
[email protected]
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Last edited by officedweller; Feb 7, 2008 at 5:59 AM.
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